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The Maple Leafs hit the halfway point in their schedule, hanging on for a 5-4 win over Ottawa in a crowd-pleasing game at the Air Canada Centre Wednesday night.

When it came to discussing that result, though, and the Leafs potential to deliver a playoff berth over the second half, there was a measure of caution.

“It’s 15 wins, that’s what it is,” Leafs coach Randy Carlyle said, lending a voice of reason to the hype building around the Leafs and their 15-9-0 record so far.

“It’s 30 points, it’s all irrelevant to me. We have a half a season left and there will be tough teams coming up, a very busy schedule to go.”

In other words, if the Leafs sit on the laurels of their mostly sound play in the first half, they’ll suffer the same second-half disaster that befell the club last season.

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Carlyle wants to guard against repeating that collapse.

Right now, he may be the Leafs’ MVP — a coach who has certainly turned the club around from last season’s disappointing finish.

As Carlyle sees it, Toronto’s 15-win campaign so far, one that includes one of the league’s best road records with nine wins, is essentially a work in progress.

“Some nights I like what we’ve seen, some nights I don’t,” the coach said.

“It’s frustrating on some night to not do the things we’ve done well on other nights. We need all our lines to score, we need six defenceman and our goalie to give us their best, and I don’t believe we’ve had that all at once from our hockey club. And that’s the encouraging thing for the coaching staff, because we think we can get that, we know we haven’t seen it yet and we think it’s there. It’s our job to get that from our club, it’s our job to get this team to play at a higher level.”

Toronto indeed has improved on several fronts from a year ago, when that club plummeted out of playoff contention and finished with the 29th-ranked penalty kill and one of the league’s worst goals against per game average.

The Leafs’ penalty kill is now ranked 13th, and has seen better than a 90 per cent success rate the past 14 games.

There are other positives emerging — the offience of Nazem Kadri and the contributions of several new members to the blueline, notably Mike Kostka, Mark Fraser and Korbinian Holzer.

On Wednesday, the top line of Tyler Bozak between Phil Kessel and James van Riemsdyk had a memorable night, wracking up three goals and four assists.

Toronto’s win over Ottawa on Wednesday — the club’s third straight — presented several concerns as well as highlights.

Toronto took a 5-2 lead on Kadri’s 10th goal of the season at the midway point of the third period. Toronto outplayed Ottawa and seemed poised for the win but instead, they failed to maintain the speed and forechecking game that had the Sens on the ropes up to that point.

Ottawa stormed back and came within a goal of embarrassing Toronto on home ice. They wound up outshooting the Leafs 43-28 while goalie James Reimer was both excellent and suspect during the key part of the game when Toronto hung on — barely — for their win.

The Leafs now prepare to face the Bruins on Thursday in Boston, and it’s a game many believe will provide a true measure of where the Leafs are as a team.

For certain, they can match and out-muscle any team in the league. But they remain inconsistent in delivering Carlyle’s game plan for a full 60 minutes.

The coach and the players know they can’t afford that inconsistency much longer.

“We feel good about our start this season, but there’s still a lot of work to be done,” captain Dion Phaneuf said.

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